With six wives to choose from, surely Henry VIII had a favorite, no? The demure and tactful Jane Seymour usually gets credit for being the favorite, but that sounds too easy to me. Sure, compared to his previous wife (Anne Boleyn, that cheeky and marvellous icon of girl power), Jane knew when to keep her trap shut and didn’t stir the pot. And her uterus nurtured the elusive XY chromosome that Henry was obsessed with.

And then she dropped dead, and really could do no wrong after that, could she? It’s called “bowing out at the top of your game,” and an unwittingly wise move on her part, as history paints her as the Golden Wife. She didn’t live long enough to have miscarriages or dreaded baby girls, or to enter middle age, or to be grossed out by his oozing leg sore or mid-life obesity.

Let’s take a look at Henry’s other girls. Catherine of Aragon was a thorn in his side toward the end of their marriage, for sure, and only gave him one daughter. But she was a dutiful and loving wife for nearly 20 years, not to mention a popular Spanish princess and a devout Catholic (he was too, for the most part). Wife #2, the sassy (to put it mildly) Anne Boleyn was such an effective flirt that the king was convinced she was flitting around with others, although it’s never been proven. She certainly tapped into his saucy side and I think he definitely admired her moxie and intelligence.

After the dearly-departed Jane, Anne of Cleves (we’re at number 4, now) was a bit of a dull dishrag, but the poor girl couldn’t speak a lick of English and communication is so important, isn’t it? Plus, there was her not-quite-supermodel appearance and the fact that she was surely repulsed by this jiggling mass of conceit and rage. Just assuming. After their divorce, Henry viewed Anne of Cleves as a sister, gave her a lovely settlement, and invited her to court quite a bit. The favorite, no, but not the outcast, either.

In sashays Wife #5, Catherine Howard. Catherine seemed to be low on brain cells but high on the vixen-factor. Henry appreciated the coquette angle, sure, but I really feel he wanted more than just glossy paintwork. And her cheating on him didn’t help matters any. Finally we have Wife #6, Catherine Parr, who was really just the king’s companion and caregiver during his last years.

Out of that cast of characters, do you think Henry VIII really had a favorite? Who do you think he held most near and dear? Or do you feel that his greatest love was actually the one he saw in the looking glass, the whole time?

And the winner is…

The lucky lady who doesn't have to marry Henry: his first wife, Katherine of Aragon

Every one of Henry’s wives got a vote.  There was some early interest in Catherine Howard.  But it was always going to be a grudge match between Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn.  Anne said it about Princess Mary, but in this case she could have been referring to Katherine: “She is my death, and I am hers.”

Let’s recap all the reasons these women had to regret marrying Henry:

Katherine of Aragon

Won the battle of Flodden while Henry was losing battles in France, but failed to give Henry a son, daughter not considered good enough, cast aside in favour of Anne Boleyn, told to her face she was lying when she said her previous marriage to Prince Arthur had not been consummated, had her marriage to Henry annulled, exiled to various increasingly uncomfortable residences and prevented from seeing Princess Mary.  Henry dressed in yellow to celebrate her death.

Anne Boleyn

Mother of the future Elizabeth I, this again not good enough for Henry, didn’t produce son fast enough so imprisoned and executed on trumped-up charges of adultery and witchcraft.  Henry did send for a swordsman from France to behead her though, rather than having her head hacked off with an axe.

Jane Seymour

Died of puerperal fever shortly after giving birth to Henry’s long-desired heir.

Anne of Cleves

Survived marriage to Henry but maligned ever since as unattractive and smelly, probably because he needed an excuse for his recurrent impotence.

Catherine Howard

Pushed into Henry’s arms by scheming uncle, sought fulfilment elsewhere and paid for it with her life.

Katherine Parr

Prevented from marrying the man of her choice by Henry who wanted her for himself, acted as regent while he was on campaign, made a home for three difficult stepchildren.  Despite all that Henry threatened her with arrest at least once and made it clear she was second best by choosing to be buried next to Jane Seymour.

Poll Results

Miss Moppet: why I voted for Catherine Howard

I didn’t vote for Katherine of Aragon because, while Henry undoubtedly did her wrong, would she have preferred to remain a Dowager Princess and not have Princess Mary?  I don’t think so.  Anne Boleyn did choose to marry Henry and knew the stakes were very high.  Besides, if she hadn’t married him there would have been no Elizabeth I.  Jane Seymour gave Henry an heir and she might have thought that was worth dying for.  And Anne of Cleves and Katherine Parr did at least survive.

So, Catherine Howard.  There seems to be a general feeling that she asked for what she got, and yes, Catherine was extremely foolish to begin an affair with Thomas Culpeper.  But look at it from her point of view.  She was young, she was pretty, she was married to an ailing king old enough to be her grandfather, and she thought there had to be more to life than this.  I think a society that idolises youth and sexuality to the degree ours does should judge Catherine Howard a little less harshly.

Lady Moppet of Yorkshire: why I voted for Katherine Parr

I quite see about Catherine Howard.  Only I like to think I would have managed things a little more cleverly than she did.  If I decided to have an affair with Thor, for example.  I’m just saying.

Anyway.  Back to the point.  Henry may not have killed Katherine Parr but he ruined her life.  Yes, when he died she got to marry Thomas Seymour but she died in childbirth less than two years later, at the age of thirty-six, with her marriage blighted by her new husband’s dalliance with her stepdaughter, Princess Elizabeth.  Who would never have been staying with her if it hadn’t been for Henry marrying her in the first place.  So thanks, Henry!  You managed to ruin someone else’s marriage from beyond the grave.

The December poll is here!  The Misadventures of Moppet wants to know: where do you stand on Twilight?

One of my main goals in London was to get my hands on a copy of Alison Weir’s new book “The Lady in the Tower” about Anne Boleyn.  On our first full day in the city we decided to visit the Tower of London, where I was so happy to find a single copy of this book.  It seemed so fitting to buy my copy at the Tower, the spot where Anne was imprisoned during her very brief trial, and where she would eventually lose her head.  Being the Tudor history addict that I am, I immediately put down the book I was reading and started in on this one.  So far I’m about 150 pages in, and I’m really enjoying it.  Ms. Weir has made some very interesting insights into the events leading up to Anne’s imprisonment and execution; some that I agree with and others that I do not.  Either way, I’m thinking about Anne Boleyn in new ways. 

One of the things that I’m really enjoying about the book is that it is written in British English, so some of the phrases and expressions are a bit different than we’d see in the United States.  It’s been fun to read in a different style and get a better feel for the differences between British English and American English.

Despite having visited the Tower of London twice before, I had never been inside the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, which is where Anne Boleyn is buried, along with the other wife Henry VIII beheaded; Katherine Howard.  Luckily, on this trip we were able to jump into a tour group and follow them into the chapel.  As I had envisioned, the chapel was relatively simple when compared to the many other chapels, churches and cathedrals we visited during our trip.  We weren’t able to get close to the altar, under which Anne is presumed to be buried, but I was happy to get near the memorial spot of my favorite of Henry VIII’s wives.   During my visit to Windsor I visited the tomb of Henry VIII.  The tomb was surprisingly simple; just a black marble plaque about six feet by three feet in the middle of the choir floor.  I had forgotten that along with being buried with his third (and favorite) wife, Jane Seymour, he was also buried with Charles I , who was beheaded in 1649, and an infant daughter of of Queen Anne.  It seemed a pretty random assortment of historical figures, and I really wonder what caused this motley crew to be buried together. 

I ended up buying quite a few books during my visit to London.  I tried to limit myself to buying books that were difficult to get in the US.  I found a couple books with random information about London and the United Kingdom.  I love learning all kinds of random, relatively useless information, so these books are perfect for me.  I also found a really great book about Bedlam, one of the most notorious mental institutions to ever exist.  

Does it make me an incredible dork that buying a book that will be available in the States in three months was one of the highlights of my trip?   I’ll post my review and thoughts once I’ve had a chance to finish it.  I don’t tend to read non-fiction quite as quickly as fiction, so it might not be done for a bit.

Before we left on our trip, I finished Marisa de los Santo’s “Belong to Me”.  I highly recommend this book.  de los Santos created vivid, insightful, and deep characters that I found myself bonding with despite not wanting too.  Piper, for example, was one character I wanted to dislike, but just couldn’t.  Underneath her initially icy exterior was a woman with an extremly kind heart.  I loved that de los Santos was able to so convincingly create a character that had such wonderful characteristics, but that were initially hidden underneath her bitchy first impression.  I saw alot of myself in Piper; I know that sometimes I can come off as being a bit of a bitch, but that’s really more out of shyness and insecurity, rather than a genuinely bitchy personality (although there’s a little bit of inner bitch in me too…just perhaps not as much as most might think!)  I think the same could be said of Piper.  

I guess this was a bit of a modge-podge entry…going from Anne Boleyn to Marisa de los Santos; I’ll try to be a little more focused with my next entry.

Photo by John Cunliffe for Abigails Ateliers. All rights reserved.

When I began collecting the titles of novels for the Royal Mistress Challenge, I realised that this amounts to a sub-genre in itself. What is the perennial allure of the mistress? I think it comes down to five things:

1. Beauty
2. Power
3. Money
4. Sex
4. Mystery

Beauty first. We like reading about beautiful people, otherwise People magazine would go out of business pretty darn quick.  Mistresses were nearly always renowned for their beauty; the few who weren’t, like Mlle Choin, the mistress/secret wife of the Grand Dauphin, Louis XIV’s son, don’t tend to get written about very much.

Power.  Mistresses and favourites were hated figures, because they were blamed for the poor decisions made by the king.  One of the reasons Marie Antoinette was so unpopular for much of her husband’s reign was that he did not have a mistress, so when things went wrong, there was no-one to blame but her.

How much power the mistress actually had varied.  In the medieval period the mistress was a shadowy figure, there for the king’s convenience, and baronial families objected to their daughters being ‘despoiled’ by the king.  By 1500 the mistress was emerging as a power player, and during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries families backed potential mistresses like political candidates.  In return they expected their piece of the pie.  And that leads us on to:

Money. The early modern period was the heyday of the mistress, who, in addition to houses, jewels and art, gathered land, money, offices, privileges and pensions and redistributed them to supporters and relatives.  By the nineteenth century, with the decline of royal autonomy, the mistress was less rapacious, but still enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle.

Sex.  By definition, a mistress is desirable.  We like reading about desirable people.  Otherwise InStyle magazine would go out of business pretty darn quick.  An aura of exciting sex hangs around the mistress.  Whether she was enjoying all this sex as much as the king is another matter, which merits further discussion.  When she was having sex with the king, that was.  Anne Boleyn held Henry VIII off for six years because she didn’t want a hit-and-run romance like the one he had with her sister Mary.  Madame de Pompadour made the transition from mistress to best friend and confidante of Louis XV without losing any of her influence over him.

Mystery.  The mistress might be a public figure, but unlike her counterpart, the queen, she was not constantly on display.  She wasn’t crowned, she didn’t eat in public or have crowds of people trooping through her apartment.  Often surprisingly little is known about her relationship with the king.  While sources abound for the reign of Louis XIV – we know what he was doing every day for much of the time – almost no letters survive between him and his mistresses, none of whom wrote their memoirs.

And maybe there’s an X-factor that defies analysis.  One thing is certain: looking at reviews of royal mistress novels, a theme quickly emerges.  Major Mary Suedom.  Wikipedia is pretty good on popular culture, so I’ll leave the definition of a Mary Sue to them:

A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers.

And so I decided that the heroine of every one of these novels I read, and I mean every one, will have to undergo that most dreaded ordeal of any fictional character.

Yes.  You know what I’m talking about.

The Mary Sue Litmus Test.

Anyway.  Having decided this, Moppet felt she’d better put her own house in order before she started calling other people’s characters Mary Sues.  I.e.: make her own alter ego, Lady Moppet of Yorkshire, take the Mary Sue Litmus Test.

The phrase ‘alter ego’ should give everyone a clue that there was never much hope that Lady Moppet wasn’t a Mary Sue.  But there’s always some hope.  Isn’t there?

So, first, Miss Moppet did the Writers’ Mary Sue Test (squeaking with laughter all the way through).  The results:

Lady Moppet of Yorkshire isn’t a character: she’s you, or you as you’d like to be. She isn’t really very cool: she blends into crowds, she hangs out on the fringes at parties, and wearing shades after dark makes her run into things. She may have sometimes thought that she was special, or destined for greater things, but probably dismissed the idea as a fantasy. She’s come in for her share of hurt, but gotten off with minor damage. And you’ve been sparing with the free handouts: whatever she gains, she’s worked for.

You may have let yourself get a little too close to Lady Moppet of Yorkshire. Maybe she’s you as you wish you were, or maybe you’re just afraid no one will like her and are trying to give her a free ride. Have some confidence in your writing! Lady Moppet of Yorkshire is a good character. Give her room to be herself before you stifle her.

I’m not going to use this test for the Royal Mistress Challenge novels because there are too many questions that only the writer can answer, such as ‘do you frequently fantasise about being your character?’  I could have a guess, but it hardly seems fair.

So Miss Moppet found another test, The Original Fiction Mary-Sue Litmus Test.  And did the test again.  Hoping that maybe this one might come out differently!  The way you re-read Gone with the Wind!  Hoping that this time, everything will be okay!

And you were expecting?  She is a royal mistress, after all.

The Tudors were a family not disinclined to eat their own if threatened which made them both entertaining and engaging.  The current royals pale in comparison, perhaps because of all the German dilution.  Sadly we can only stand back and watch as the English pride in their royals wains.  Because of the dreary state of English affairs, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall is a welcomed read.

Our hero in the novel is not Henry VIII or Anne Boleyn although she comes in a strong second, it is the down and dirty street fighter Thomas Cromwell who makes himself the consummate royal councilor.  Cromwell eventually learns how to take the sludge and emesis, the animal and human waste of the Thames and make a very saleable wine of it.  His trick of survival was to never drink more than a ceremonial sip while others indulged themselves.

If in the past you have stumbled over the large cast of Tudor characters, the author has come to your aid by providing lists of characters and the family shrubbery of the Tudors.  Even so it is a hopeless task to try to understand how the English run a government.  Based on how they function at home it must have taken divine intervention for them to clutch their first colony let alone something approaching an empire.

  This leads to my theory on the nurturing of Shakespeare, yet another reason to enjoy reading about Thomas Cromwell and associates.  It was the fractious, bloody, in-your-face people with a language held together by thievery and the unwashed of street and tavern that brewed the right amount of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and hormones to give William Shakespeare the superior edge on stage.

For the main characters of the novel there are Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII as you would expect.  Then there are the queens Thomas Wolsey, Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, and Thomas More.  It is any wonder that by the end of the book, two had a forced exit with more to follow.  Peace and tranquility require one and only one queen.  Charles Marlin and John Hink

There was an interesting piece in the Independent on Sunday’s The New Review this weekend.

In the Arts & Books section, Joy Lo Dico had written an article about a new collection of “Love Letters Of Great Women”, edited by Ursula Doyle, and published by Macmillan.

The publication of this collection was the opportunity for Lo Dico to write about women’s billet-doux, mentioning such examples as Anne Boleyn, writing a letter prior to Henry VIII deciding to chop her head off.

Now, we have no problem with the article, per se. It’s the illustrations for the feature that interested us.

Here’s the contemporary portrait of Anne Boleyn, as commonly used to illustrate articles about her.

But here’s who the Sindy describes as “Anne Boleyn”.

Notice a difference? The contemporary portrait has been eschewed, in favour of a 19th century, romanticised, prettified version of what Boleyn may have – but probably didn’t – looked like.

Presumably, this version fit the romantic and more domestic story it illustrated better than the powerful, hands-on-hips Tudor original.

The arts have had a tendency to prettify famous women in history. Apparently, we can’t deal with plain heroines. It’s ironic that Charlotte Bronte created in Jane Eyre an unconventional looking, plain, woman as her heroine, when she has been subject to prettification herself.

Even while she was alive, London society couldn’t deal with the fact that a famous female novelist, seen as romantic for her isolation in a moorside vicarage and her corset-bursting tales, could actually be a four foot something, cripplingly short-sighted, plain Yorkshirewoman.

George Richmond painted a somewhat romantic portrait of Charlotte in her lifetime, that now adorns many books by and about her.

This was itself seen, by some, as too plain; a further, even more airbrushed, version of Richmond’s portrait was required to match people’s perceptions of what a romantic novelist should look like.

So when a photograph of Bronte – taken around the time of her marriage in the 1850s – surfaced over 100 years after Bronte’s death, you can imagine the shock.

No, actually, you can’t. It looks like an ordinary Victorian woman, doesn’t it? But that was the problem – the 20th century readers didn’t want their romantic heroine to look like an ordinary married woman in her 30s anymore than the Victorians did. There were headlines about her frumpishness, with fans denouncing the photo as a fake – they couldn’t deal with their idol not looking like a romantic ideal.

And this attitude seems to be prevalent even today, in a national newspaper, by the sub, or the picture researcher, or whoever.

Anne Boleyn can’t be a proud, haughty, strong woman. She has to be depicted in her Victorian chasteness, all downcast eyes and sad mouth. That fits the “domestic bliss” image being promoted in this feature.

But just like the girly interpretations of Charlotte Bronte’s image, it’s fake, and does the women in question no favours.

]]> http://debbiedunn.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/five-of-the-most-famous-ghosts/ Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:38:36 +0000 debbiedunn http://debbiedunn.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/five-of-the-most-famous-ghosts/

Home of John and Lucy Bell, public domain picture

Click on Tempting Tips, Tales, & Topics to read the entire article.

John Guy’s review of Alison Weir’s latest book, The Lady in The Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn, has various criticisms to make, one of which I am going to deal with here.

If you look at the section in Weir’s book entitled ‘Notes on Some of the Sources’ you will find, listed separately, Lancelot de Carles: Epistre contenant le proces criminel faict a l’encontre de la royne Anne Boullant d’Angleterre and, a few pages on, Crispin, Lord of Milherve. Carles is described as ‘almoner to the Dauphin of France (the future Henri II), a renowned poet and man of letters, and the author of blazons and sacred poetry…who was present at Anne’s trial’ (p.338).  Milherve is described, again, as a man of letters who was present at Anne’s trial (p.341).  Both sources produced poetry describing Anne’s fall.

What’s the problem with all that?  Well, according to Guy:

Weir believes that a separate poem by another Frenchman, an “eyewitness” at Anne’s trial, one Crispin de Miherve, corroborates de Carles and adds extra details. Unfortunately, “Crispin” is a phantom. A French scholar proved in 1844 that the text Weir is using had been doctored, and in 1927 it was shown by comparing all the genuine manuscripts that the two poems are identical and by de Carles. Weir has been duped.

When I read this I turned to the index of The Lady in the Tower to see if I could find a page where both de Miherve and de Carles were mentioned.  I could – page 262.  This page and the following one discuss who served Anne as ladies-in-waiting during her time in the Tower.  The advantage of writing a book focussing on only part of a subject’s life is that there is room to discuss matters like this, which might go by the board in a full biography.  It’s an interesting section which I will return to in a later post.  Weir concludes that as a special favour to his disgraced queen, during her imprisonment in the Tower of London Henry VIII permitted Anne the company of four of her young maids of honour (in addition to four older women, two of whom departed after her condemnation).  In the footnotes Weir cites, in total, six sources to support the fact that Anne was attended by young women at this time, not just her older ladies-in-waiting.  Two of those sources are by Carles and Milherve – in other words, by the same person.

So the six sources Weir cites are reduced to five.  Does that matter?  To the general reader, no.  Even without the Milherve corroboration, it’s still very likely that Anne was attended by maids of honour in the Tower.  Five sources are ample to support a fairly minor point such as this one.  But to the academic world, it does matter.  Narrative history is a constant balancing act, a weighing up of one source against another, and every tip in the balance is crucial.

However.  If Weir has slipped up, she’s not the only one.

Two otherwise excellent books dealing with fashion in Louis XIV’s France (an under-studied subject), Diana de Marly’s Louis XIV and Versailles and Pamela Cowan’s A Fanfare for the Sun King: Unfolding Fans for Louis XIV, cite the memoirs of the Marquise de Montespan, one of Louis XIV’s mistresses and the mother of several of his children.  Here’s a quote from the Montespan memoirs, reproduced on page 90 of A Fanfare for the Sun King, describing a lottery held by Cardinal Mazarin.  (Lotteries, in the seventeenth century, could be a means of entertaining guests at a party and distributing expensive gifts.)

The Queens distributed the tickets with every appearance of honesty and good faith.  But I had reason to remark, by what happened to myself, that the tickets had been registered beforehand.  The young Queen, who felt her garter slipping off, came to me in order to tighten it.  She handed me her ticket to hold for a moment, and when she had fastened her garter, I gave her back my ticket instead of her own…My number won a portrait of the King set in brilliants, much to the surprise of the Queen Mother and His Eminence; they could not get over it.

Reading this left me puzzled.  I had spent several years in the British Library, reading primary and secondary sources for exactly this period without ever, once, encountering any memoirs by Madame de Montespan.  There was nothing obviously fake in the quote, in fact, quite the reverse: it is likely lotteries of this nature were fixed, with the biggest prizes going to those highest in rank, as they did at the lottery held at the festival of the Enchanted Isle, held by Louis XIV at Versailles in May 1664.

I checked the bibliography of the most authoritative biography of Montespan I knew to exist, Madame de Montespan by Jean-Christian Petitfils, Fayard, 1988.  This did indeed include a two volume 1829 edition of the Memoires.  But there was a note with it, which, translated, reads:

These memoirs, apocryphal but quite well written, have been attributed to Philippe Musoni.  The same series includes the Memoires, equally apocryphal, of Mlle de La Valliere.

Of course, it could be that Musoni (supposing him to be the author) based his work on a genuine source, written by Montespan or someone close to her.  But in the absence of any evidence, we have to assume he didn’t, which means the entire book must be completely discounted.

And here’s another book which has to be discounted:

I’ve saved the best till last.  This is Madame du Hausset’s Memoires sur Louis XV et Madame de Pompadour, purporting to be an account of du Hausset’s time in Pompadour’s service, described by Alden R. Gordon, ‘The Longest-Enduring Pompadour Hoax: Senac de Meilhan and the Journal de Madame du Hausset‘ (Art and culture in the eighteenth century: new dimensions and multiple perspectives, ed. Elise Goodman, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001) as ‘one of the most successful literary fabrications of all time, enduring for eighteen decades…No single source has been so frequently used as the basis for anecdotal insight into the intimate life of Madame de Pompadour and Louis XV.’

Indeed.  Some of Hausset’s most interesting passages concern Louis XV’s private brothel, and how Pompadour (who was no longer sleeping with the King) would arrange for the children of the King’s mistresses to be cared for.

Madame du Hausset was indeed employed in the household of Madame de Pompadour, but her so-called memoirs were written after the Revolution, probably by Gabriel Senac de Meilhan, the son of one of Louis XV’s doctors.  He would have had inside knowledge of the royal court.  But he wasn’t a lady-in-waiting to Madame de Pompadour.

Doubts were raised about the authenticity of the Madame du Hausset manuscript as early as October 1954 by Pierre Gaxotte.  It has been reprinted (presented as almost entirely authentic) in a scholarly edition as recently as 2002.  Why has it taken so long for it to be debunked?  Well, hoaxes like this one, when they work, work because they’re good – they’re written by people who know what they are talking about and have access to authentic sources of information.  The other reason?  The Hausset memoirs filled a gap, providing details of Pompadour’s private life that are available nowhere else.

Gordon:

The anecdotes in Madame du Hausset are delightful and have seemed so necessary to the biographer because they are the only sustained intimate descriptions of the private life shared by Louis XV with Madame de Pompadour.  And therein lies the gnawing sensation that the journal of Madame du Hausset is too good to be true.  The anecdotes supply precisely the kind of voyeuristic intimacy about incidents, emotions, and personal quirks that people desperately want to know about any famous person.  Having not existed in actuality they had to be invented to supply the lack.

Gordon also concludes that ‘In a scholarly generation given to interpretation, the need to vet primary sources for authentication has not been aggressively practiced.’

And now a confession: Miss Moppet is not clean on this.  The dissertation I completed in the third year of my history degree, which looked at the lives of eighteenth-century French noblewomen through the medium of their memoirs, included extensive quotations from the Memoires de Madame de Crequy.  What I didn’t know (and, presumably, nor did my tutors or examiners, because the dissertation got a high mark and no-one mentioned it) was that Madame de Crequy’s memoirs are a suspect source.  The British Library catalogue attributes them to Pierre-Marie-Jean Cousin de Courchamps.

I will freely admit that even now I have not got to the bottom of this matter.  I had taken it for granted that the memoirs were authentic because they were quoted in one of the seminal works on the French nobility, Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret’s 1976 The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: From Feudalism to Enlightenment. But according to Will L. McLendon, ‘A Problem in Plagiarism: Washington Irving and Cousen de Courchamps’, Comparative Literature, Vol 20, No.2, Spring 1968, pp. 157-169, the Crequy memoirs were declared false as early as 1836.

One other fact makes me feel that some mystery surrounds the matter.  One of the sources used to disprove the authorship of the Crequy memoirs happens to be Madame de Crequy’s authentic correspondence with none other than that supremely successful hoaxer…Senac de Meilhan.

Did the poacher turn gamekeeper?  I’m not sure.  But if I find out, you’ll be the first to know.

Henry Tudor’s victory at Bosworth Field was an unlikely outcome. The young earl of Richmond had lived in exile abroad since he was fourteen years old. He also had a relatively weak claim to the throne and a modest army of supporters, some 2000 mercenaries and a handful of rebells . His opponent,  Richard III, was an experienced military leader. He commanded the larger of the two armies and he also had a strong claim to the throne.

The causes of Richard’s defeat are easy to pinpoint. First, there was Margaret Beaufort,  Henry’s mother. This formidable woman, who gave birth to Henry when she was just thirteen years old, had married a powerful nobleman,  Lord Stanley. Stanley was her forth husband and more than likely, this was a marriage of convenience, putting Margaret in a position to drum up support for her son. Notably, she conspired with the widow of Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville, when it became apparent that Richard was determined to hold on to the throne and that his nephews were more than likely dead.

Although Stanley initially sided with Richard, on the battlefield, he had an apparent change of heart and stepped in to assist his son-in-law.

Second, there was the small matter of the of the princes in the tower. Richard had a very strong blood claim to the throne and evidence that his nephews were illegitimate. Public opinion turned against him, however, when the murder of the princes became public knowledge. Evidence of a precontract, invalidating the marriage between Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville was compelling, but the  death of the princes,  proven or otherwise, was enough to present Richard as a ruthless tyrant. It undercut many years of loyal service to his brother, Edward IV, and his strong track record as a landowner and military leader in the north of England.

Two years into Richard’s reign, in 1485, Henry Tudor received financial support to orchestrate a rebellion and was convinced that he would be able to drum up sufficient support to challenge Richard. In addition to 2000 hired mercenaries, Henry could count of the support of the Earl of Oxford and his uncle, Jasper Tudor, who also brought together a small band of followers from within England.

Henry landed in Pembrokeshire on August 7th and began to march through Wales towards Richard’s army, situated near Nottingham.

As a central location, the town of Nottingham afforded Richard something of a strategic advantage. He had been aware of the planned invasion for some time and knew he had to reach the rebels quickly, wherever they landed. Given the mood in the country at the time, time would certainly work against the king. He was aware of the waverying loyalties among the nobility, many of whom were disturbed by the disappearance of Edward IV’s sons. In particular, Lord Stanley asked to be able to return home to his estates when it became clear that Henry Tudor was approaching with an army.

Stanley’s loyalties were clearly divided and Richard only agreed to let him return home if he agreed to leave his son in Richard’s custody, as a hostage for his father’s good behavior.

While Richard began collecting together his army, however,  Lord Stanley and his brother, Sir William Stanley, did little to intervene on Richard’s behalf. They did not attempt to stop Henry Tudor’s progress towards Richard, for instance.

Richard had the support of several key noblemen, including the Duke of Norfolk and his son, and the Earl of Surrey. On the other hand, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, was doing little to raise an army from among his men and many other nobles were likewise ignoring the royal summons. Whether this was due to their negative opinion of Richard or their unwillingness to go on fighting after several decades of such discord, it is difficult to say. Support, however, was not forthcoming to either Richard or Henry to the extent that they had each expected.

On August 22nd, Richard and Henry prepared to fight near the village of Market Bosworth. By that point, Richard commanded approximately 9000 men. Henry Tudor had roughly 5000. Hedging their bets were Sir William Stanley and Thomas, Lord Stanley with 6000 men between them.

Ultimately, the outcome of the battle was decided quickly. According to Polydore Vergil, a prominent chronicler of the period, the battle lasted about two hours. The Stanleys were notably non-committal but it seemed that many of the noblemen commanding armies were reluctant to fight for either side without having some sense of who was likely to triumph.

In reality, Richard was the favorite — right until the last minute. First, the Duke of Norfolk, one of Richard’s key supporters, was killed. This apparently produced some cries from among Richard’s men that they should flee.

Richard, however, decided to seize an opportunity to kill Henry Tudor himself, who was somewhat exposed in the midst of the fighting. Proving his worth as a military leader, Richard charged  to engage Henry. Although this might sound like a rash move, it was tactically brilliant. It looked likely that Henry would indeed be killed. In fact, Richard’s maneuvor resulted in the death of many of the men surrounding Henry, including his standard bearer Sir William Brandon.

The Stanleys, however, were prepared to take a risk of their own. Sir William Stanely, still watching from the sidelines, saw Richard’s plan and an opportunity to cut him off from his main army.  Richard was cut down before he could reach Henry and brutally murdered, along with many of his household bodyguards who tried to save him.

The relevance of this single event to the unfolding of the next seventy-three years is crucial. It demonstrated a number of things about the fragility of the crown in England, the dangers posed by rival claimants, and the potential for power play among the nobility. As king, Henry VII would certainly apply what he likely learned on this day. He worked hard to build the power of the crown, spending lavishly on creating a court that branded him and his family as the rightful rulers of the kingdom. It was no coincidence, for example, that Henry’s first son was named Arthur, after the legendary hero of British folklore. He also worked hard to amass a small fortune, working to keep the crown independent of parliament and the nobility as much as possible. He also curbed the power of the nobles, securing acts of attainder against most of those who had fought for Richard and only agreeing to restore rights to land and property when loyalties had been sufficiently proven.

Henry also made strategic alliances to nullify rival claims to the throne. His marriage to Elizabeth of York, for instance, is still noted as a key unification of the major rival factions, the House of Lancaster, represented by Henry, and the House of York, represented by Elizabeth, Edward IV’s daughter.

The marriage between Arthur and Catherine of Aragon also testifies to Henry’s efforts to build foreign credibility and prestige for England. Catherine was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, two of the most powerful rulers of the period. Similarly, allying Margaret, his eldest daughter, to the Scottish King, and vying for Mary’s marriage to the king of France, Henry demonstrated his interest in unifying the country and avoiding foreign wars; he sought to achieve prowess through diplomacy rather than military conquest.

Henry VIII, of course, was decidedly different from his father in temperament. He was keen to engage in foreign wars and sought to achieve prowess by attacking England’s traditional rival, France. He was also far less practical minded about building meaningful alliances through marriage. His relationship with Catherine of Aragon, when it deteriorated and there was evidence that they would have no more children, was not something that he sought to manage as his father might have done. Four of Henry’s six marriages were with English-born women. Aside from limiting the potential for developing foreign alliances, this preference for English wives also created factions. The influence of Anne Bolyen’s family (and she was the highest born of the four), lead to the creation of a particularly powerful faction within the government, one that spurned on reforms and the dissolution of the monasteries.

Henry’s thirst for war also weakened the crown financially. Despite the gains made through the redistribution of church lands, when Edward VI inherited the throne, the country was facing considerable financial problems.

The religious upheaval of Henry VIII’s reign also had dramatic repercussions for his children and again appeared to compromise much of Henry VII’s work to create unity and stability in England. At the very least, the creation of the English church and the unique identity it developed, left many disenfranchised. Catholics were opposed to the religious changes, for obvious reasons. Protestants, too, never found the reforms sufficient to match their beliefs. Furthermore, the religious divisions created political and social divisions as well, and established rival claimants to the throne. Mary had to contend with her half-sister as a serious threat to her position; Lady Jane Grey was also used as a pawn to exploit the fundamental differences of religion between Edward VI and Mary, who, according to his father’s will, at least, was to be his heir.

Elizabeth, too, faced threats from rival claimants. Although few could argue that she was unsuccessful at managing those elements throughout her reign, she had to take them seriously.

The Tudors certainly contributed to the development of England and the UK in many different ways, but they also struggled with a particular problem that can be traced back to how Henry Tudor became king.

The movie tie-in cover

It was the original cover of The Other Boleyn Girl which famously started the trend for ‘headless women’ covers for historical novels.  I may be in the minority in not liking that original cover.  It was the colours: I just found them drab and boring.  I far prefer the vibrant emerald green of the movie tie-in cover.  This was the first copy of the book which I bought, and the green helped sell it to me (rather than the Photoshopping, which I’ve seen better done).

The question I want to answer is: why green?  Why not blue, red or yellow?  Why associate Anne Boleyn with the colour green?

Personally, the first thing that comes to mind is the idea of envy and jealousy: the ‘green-eyed jealousy’ and ‘green-eyed monster’ Shakespeare wrote about in The Merchant of Venice.  That’s pretty appropriate to the storyline of TOBG, which is chock full of envy and jealousy in the form of rivalry between Anne and her sister Mary.  Both envy the other at different times, but it is Anne who is portrayed as devoured by envy, consumed by ambition and determination to shove her sister out of the way and get to the top.

The second thing Anne’s green dress made me think of is another woman who dresses in green – a character in one of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, The Silver Chair.  When Jill and Eustace meet The Lady of the Green Kirtle on their journey to the land of the giants, they think she is lovely.  But their companion and guide, Puddleglum, is suspicious, and rightly so.  The Lady is a witch, with the power to transform into a serpent, ’shining, and as green as poison.’

Well, Anne Boleyn doesn’t transform into a serpent in the pages of TOBG (don’t want to disappoint anyone who hasn’t read it) but she is shown to resort to witchcraft on more than one occasion.  She also attempts to poison an enemy.  Whether she was really guilty of this or not, it was something of which she was accused.   So again the green dress seems appropriate.

Or at least that’s how a 21st century audience sees it.  Jane Ashelford, discussing the language of colours in the sixteenth century, says that green was then known as ‘the colour of love and joy’ (The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society 1500-1914, London: The National Trust, 1996, revised ed. 2000, p.32).  Why love and joy?  Green was associated with Venus, the goddess of love, who was portrayed rising from green waves, as in Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus.  This association continued right through the early modern period (about 1500-1800) and was the reason why women’s bedchambers were so often decorated in green.  One of the best examples is the Green Velvet Bedchamber at Houghton Hall, Norfolk, England.  In 1732 William Kent designed a bed for this room with a gilded double shell against the headcloth (which you can just about glimpse through the curtains in the image below) to represent the shell in which Venus was borne to the shore.  There’s another green-upholstered bedchamber (although the colour has faded badly) at Osterley Park on the outskirts of London.  For this, the State Bedchamber, Robert Adam designed an eight-poster bed as a Temple of Venus in 1775-6 – click through the slide show to see it.

So although the ‘green’ Other Boleyn Girl cover may have been designed with the intention of portraying Anne as less than angelic, I like to think that she and her contemporaries would have seen it quite differently – as a tribute to her beauty and desirability.

The Green Bedchamber, Houghton Hall, Norfolk. Photo by rpbmclean.

Fuente: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). Volume III. Renascence and Reformation.

Continuación de:

La Nueva Poesía Inglesa (I): Tottel’s Miscellany

2. Thomas Wyatt.

El movimiento de la Nueva Poesía tuvo un pionero y dos líderes. El pionero fue Sir Thomas Wyatt, al que se unió posteriormente Henry Howard, Conde de Surrey. Un esbozo de sus vidas, especialmente la del primero, puede ser de interés para ayudar a mostrar el verdadero alcance de la influencia europea en la Nueva Poesía Inglesa.

Thomas Wyatt nació alrededor de 1503. Fue educado en Cambridge y Oxford. En 1511, su padre fue nombrado condestable junto con Sir Thomas Boleyn. Desde niño, Wyatt tuvo contacto con la hija de Sir Thomas, Anne Boleyn, una dama con quien habría de relacionársele muy estrechamente en el futuro.

En 1526, Wyatt acompañó a Sir Thomas Cheney en una misión diplomática en Francia. En 1527, fue enviado con  el embajador inglés, Sir John Russell, a la Corte Papal. En esa época visitó Venecia, Ferrara, Bolonia y Florencia. A su vuelta, fue capturado por las Fuerzas Imperiales al servicio del Duque de Borbón, pero consiguió escapar. En 1528, recibió el título de Gran Mariscal en Calais. En 1537, fue enviado como embajador ante el Emperador Carlos V, y permaneció en el continente (fundamentalmente en España) hasta 1539.

En abril de ese mismo año fue llamado a consultas por culpa de las intrigas de un compañero de embajada, Edmund Bonner. Al final de ese año, fue enviado a Flandes para encontrarse con el Emperador y seguirlo hasta París, de donde volvería en 1540. Tras la caída de Cromwell (que había apoyado a Wyatt) Bonner consiguió que Thomas fuese encerrado en la Torre de Londres, acusado de traición. Finalmente, fue liberado tras negar las acusaciones y haber pedido la clemencia del rey.

Wyatt se retiró a su casa de Allington, en Kent, y empleó su tiempo libre en escribir sus sátiras y paráfrasis de los Salmos Penitenciales. A finales del verano de 1542, estando enfermo, recibió la orden de conducir hasta Londres al embajador del Emperador. Al apresurarse en cumplir su misión, contrajo una fiebre y murió por el camino, en Sherborne, el 11 de octubre.

Es preciso mencionar un episodio anterior de la vida de Thomas Wyatt. Tradicionalmente se ha considerado que, en su juventud, Thomas fue el amante de Anne Boleyn. Se ha documentado que, cuando el rey quiso hacerla su esposa, Wyatt le informó de que había mantenido una relación con ella. Sea cual sea la verdad de este oscuro asunto, Thomas Wyatt actuó como Aguador Real en la coronación de la segunda esposa de Henry VIII, en 1533. También fue hecho prisionero cuando la reina cayó en desgracia, en mayo de 1536.

Uno de sus sonetos, “Whoso list to hunt” (Quien quiera cazar), claramente hace referencia a Anne Boleyn en el verso: “Noli me tangere; for Caesar’s I am” (No me toques, pues soy del César), imitación de la Rima 157 de Petrarca “Una candida cerva”. También hay un epigrama titulado “Of His Love called Anna” (De su amada, llamada Anna) y otra referencia a Anne ha sido encontrada por algunos críticos en el soneto “Though I myself be bridled of my mind” (Aunque yo mismo llevo riendas en mi mente). Los sucesos acontecidos en mayo de 1536, sin duda, le llevaron a comentar que mayo era el mes más desafortunado del año.

Hemos visto que Wyatt viajaba con frecuencia al extranjero, y que pasó algún tiempo en Italia. Fue allí en donde entró en contacto con las ideas y las formas que habrían de rejuvenecer la poesía inglesa. Aunque no es este el lugar para explicar los cambios que se produjeron en la versificación entre Chaucer y los poetas isabelinos, cabe decir que ni los principios del ritmo y el acento de Chaucer, o aún menos su gramática, fueron completamente asimilados por sus seguidores (Lydgate, Occleve y Hawes).

Al especial cuidado de Chaucer por colocar un acento o una pausa en el verso, le siguieron un desorden caótico y una dicción redundante, débil y extraña. Además, la “e” final articulada, de la que Chaucer había hecho un ingenioso uso, había sido desterrada del habla común. Y el acento final de palabras derivadas del francés (como favour, virtue, travail) había comenzado a colocarse en la primera sílaba, produciendo una confusa irregularidad prosódica.

Fue misión de Wyatt y de su joven contemporáneo, Surrey, sustituir el caos por el orden; especialmente a través de la influencia italiana que llevarían a la poesía inglesa. Un influjo que posteriormente se uniría al de la tradición clásica,  gracias a Spenser.

Continúa en:

La Nueva Poesía Inglesa (III): Los sonetos de Thomas Wyatt
La Nueva Poesía Inglesa (IV): El tratamiento amoroso en Wyatt
La Nueva Poesía Inglesa (V): Los epigramas, las sátiras y las piezas religiosas de Wyatt

Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament

Westminster Hall was completed for William Rufus in 1099, so this year it celebrates its 910th birthday. It survived the two fires and has been the setting for numerous royal events – every coronation feast from Richard I in 1189 to George IV in 1832, the trials of Anne Boleyn and Charles I, and the lying in state of kings and queens, most recently (2002) HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. At the time I wanted to go because it’s not the sort of thing you see every day, but the four-mile queue put me off.

My first impression of the hall was that it was big. The second was that it was intensely atmospheric – you really sense the weight of the past here, and it feels quite different from the rest of the palace. The third was that it was absolutely freezing cold. It was quite a cold day – in fact I’ve lost one of my gloves and this was the day I gave in and bought a new pair because my hands were so cold – but it seemed even colder in that hall. I couldn’t see any fireplaces. Possibly they would have brought in braziers in the Middle Ages?

The hall was designed as living space – until the reign of Henry VIII, who moved to Whitehall, monarchs lived at the Palace of Westminster.

Next: how a chapel became a debating chamber

Anne Boleyn is one of the most famous Queens of England. Typically in literature she is described as the manipulative schemer who lured Henry VIII from his devoted wife Katharine of Aragon and later met her death on (probably trumped up) charges of Adultery, Incest and Treason.

In this book, Denny presents a different view of Anne, as a victim of Henry’s cold blooded-ness.  She asserts that Henry relentlessly pursued Anne, who resisted because of his marriage to Katharine.  Anne finally succumbed to Henry’s advances and was then cast aside when it no longer suited him to be married to her.

The book is written in a very ‘readable’ way.  I often find non-fiction to be somewhat dry; however this book flowed easily and held my interest throughout.

It has obviously been very well researched, and Denny is clearly a Boleyn enthusiast, with a lot of passion for her subject.  However, this is a double edged sword.  While I firmly believe that it is important for any biographer to really care about their subject, Denny’s own view means that this book is extremely biased.  Katharine of Aragon is described as a vicious, manipulative and unreasonable woman, who lied to fulfill her ambition to become Queen of England.  Anne is painted almost as a saint, who could do no wrong and was blameless in every respect.

Joanna Denny wrote this book to bring balance to the general view of Anne; however, she has not created balance but has merely tipped the scales all the way to the other side.  She claims that the critics of Anne are biased – and this may well be true – but unfortunately, Denny shows herself to be equally as biased.  The women in Anne’s world are portrayed as evil and two faced, with the exception of Elizabeth I, Anne’s daughter.

I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Anne or the Tudor period, but I do not think that this book is ‘the truth’ about Anne Boleyn, as the author claims.

May 22-30, 2009

Finally satisfied my dim sum craving at Chinatown. Gladys and I met up with her friend Michelle and her German friend at Harbor City (I think that was what the restaurant was called) and had lunch there. Pretty decent and in my opinion, comparable to dim sum you get from Crystal Jade in Singapore. Three cheers for Cantonese chefs!

After lunch, we walked along Shaftesbury Ave towards Piccadilly and then I honestly cannot remember what we did for the rest of that day. I think we had dinner at Belgo’s, a German/Belgian pub near Covent Garden where you can pay according to the time you entered (5-6.30pm) and the food is really good there. Either that or we had fish and chips at Endell Street. My memory of dinners from six months ago fails me.

The next day however was pretty eventful. We made our way to Leicester Square and bought tickets for Les Miserables. It was a chilly morning and we took refuge at Pret and had breakfast there. I prefer the hot chocolate there to Paul’s because it is not too thick. And the jalapeno chicken wrap from Pret is fantastic. Eventually Dylan and Nat made it to Leicester Square and they were in the TKTS queue when we met up with them.

Next up was a walk to Trafalgar Square and into the National Gallery. I am now officially immune to art galleries, museums and such.

Nat, Dylan, Gladys and I at Trafalgar Square

Lunch was at St Martin's Cafe in the Crypt

And dinner was at Belgo's again.

Excellent excellent excellent musical.

Gladys’ last day

The next morning, Gladys and I were having breakfast at Paul’s while waiting for Yuanting and Kenny to arrive from San Francisco. They arrived at Gloucester just as we ordered our brekkie so I went to get them and walked with them to the hostel.

Gladys had the afternoon to walk around before getting to the airport in the evening. And it was her birthday on the 29th May so she chose to celebrate it over duck rice at Four Season’s in Chinatown. That done, the afternoon included braving the drizzle and winds at Trafalgar Square and the Westminster area.

We contemplated checking out 10 Downing Street and also perhaps getting to Oxford/Bond for a bit of shopping. Eventually though we headed back to the hostel so Gladys could get ready to leave for the airport. I accompanied her to the airport and said our goodbyes while she was at the tax rebate queue and went back to Gloucester for dinner with Yuanting and Kenny at Nando’s.

Borough Market

After hearing the rave reviews I had given to Borough Market, Yuanting and Kenny decided to pay it a visit and of course, I was going to join them. I was mildly disappointed though because there were less shops on a weekday and the atmosphere just wasn’t the same as Saturday but the main shops were there nonetheless.

Considerably less people on a weekday

Yuanting and Kenny had a wheat grass drink but no way was I going to have that

I opted for apple cider instead.

it didn't smell that bad really

freshly made sangria and pimms and fresh paella!

Now, I’ve been reading about the decline of the the wet market in Singapore. If the wet markets in Singapore were anything like Borough Market, I’m pretty sure they will do better than supermarket chains.

The three of us then made our way along the south bank of the river towards Tower Bridge and the Tower of London but by the time we got to the Tower of London, it was not far from the last entrance so we thought why rush it and decided to come back the next day and not go to Buckingham Palace as originally planned.

Yuanting and Kenny’s last day

May 29th, the day Yuanting and Kenny were flying back to Singapore and I would be alone again, for one night before leaving for Madrid the following day. We had originally decided to do Buckingham Palace but had to choose between that or Tower of London and it was the latter that won out.

There were little tents set up in the lawn and guides dressed in medieval costumes like there was a fair going on. It was pretty fun to hear them talk about the olden days but we were really there to join the tour given by the yeomen who protect the tower.

Tower of London

helmut looks ridiculous, i hope it works

totally in character now

our yeoman guide

The White Tower

So the funny thing is everyone on the little tour seemed more interested in Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn than anything else. I guess people always love a little scandal. Plus their story is currently making the rounds in movies and TV shows (The Other Boleyn Sister and The Tudors, etc).

I was more fascinated by the prospect of getting to see the crown jewels. Before that though, was an explanation of the ravens that live in the courtyard and how legend has it that if the ravens leave, the monarchy will tumble. I wonder what Queen E II really feels about that. Well, if I was a raven and I was getting fed chunks of red raw meat from the royal kitchen, of course I wouldn’t leave.

Tudor architecture and the ravens

Inside the White Tower, we got to see an exhibition about Henry VIII and his costumes, battle gear and all that, and even the royal latrine. And in the tower that houses the crown jewels, we were treated to footage of the jewels being used during ceremonies. Oh, of course we got to see the jewels too. And we were truly awestruck by the splendor and beauty of those jewels. No photos were allowed though. But the size of some of those diamonds… Wow.

OK, so for me, the Tower of London was one of the city’s top highlights. Incredible and definitely a must-do in London. That afternoon, we squeezed in a spot of shopping at Oxford Circus before Kenny and Yuanting packed up and left for the airport. I had been worrying about my suitcase all week because I wanted to leave it in London while I brought my backpack with me to Madrid. It finally worked out – I left it in the hostel and by God’s blessing, managed to find a kind couple (cousin’s friend’s in-laws) to pick it up and store it in their house for three months. More on that later.

So, I left London to spend the night at a hotel by London Gatwick airport, from where I would catch my early flight to Madrid…..

Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna von Hapsburg-Lothringen, fifteenth child and youngest daughter of the Empress Maria Teresa was born in the Hofburg Palace, Vienna on the 2nd November 1755.

I think that pretty much everyone has worked out by now that I am totally obsessed with Marie Antoinette. I think that it has always been this way as I really can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in her and her life. One of my earliest memories is of wandering around my grandmother’s rose garden aged four in a long white nightdress with a straw hat on my head and a basket over my arm, gathering the heads of flowers and singing to myself as I ‘played Marie Antoinette’.

I was a weird child. I also liked to dress up as Anne Boleyn and recreate her final walk down from her cell to the scaffold. Who doesn’t?

Happy birthday Marie Antoinette.

I have just finished re-reading a book about Marie Antoinette. I love reading about her and other ill-fated monarchs that met untimely ends.

I wonder, what is my fascination with these doomed women? I love reading about Anne Boleyn and Mary Stuart too. I think that it would be great to have all those clothes, shoes, jewelry, houses, etc. And this is probably part of the appeal, but there is something to be said about having it all, and then losing everything. I think another reason why I am so interested in the lives of these women, is because like all little girls, at one point in time I sincerely wanted to be a princess. Truth be told, I still wish I was at times. Looking into their lives gives me a glimpse and hint at what it would be like if I were a princess. While I would have liked to be a princess, I can say that I am happy with the time and position I was born into. 

I like having more insight into the lives of these women. Their names are names that everyone knows, but I feel that they have been misrepresented. Reading their histories, you can really feel sympathy for these women. They seem so lonely. It really is sad. They were surrounded by people day in and day out, and yet they were so alone. They always seemed to have so much to overcome in their everyday lives. They had to constantly fear the plotting of their fellow countrymen. I mean, what is the point of ruling a country, having every material good imaginable, if you don’t love your husband and at the end of it all, you are beheaded. I guess all things do come at a certain cost. I would much rather have my head and life than everything they had.

In life she was sassy, smart, and bold – not much has changed! Anne Boleyn has proven to be as tenacious and sensational without a head as she was with one attached.  

Her spirit has been seen wafting across the river’s bridge on the grounds of  Hever Castle, her childhood home. On a more energetic note, she sometimes leads ghostly processions in and around the Tower of London, where she was executed. Who doesn’t love a parade? Perhaps not the Tower guard in 1864 who ran through her spirit with his bayonet and prompted received a shock so strong it temporarily knocked him out.

 Bringing the drama, as usual, ghostly Anne appears on her death anniversary at Blickling Hall, in a coach pulled by headless horses steered by a headless horseman. The coach reportedly leaves her off at the front door of the building (chivalry is not dead, even when the horseman is), her dripping head tucked under her arm, and she then wanders the hallways all bloody night long.  Get this girl some Ambien!

The Wicked Scholars thought the first two seasons of The Tudors were pretty entertaining. Lots of nudity, violence, and people being burned alive. For those who aren’t into historical drama, or who weren’t paying attention in History class, King Henry VIII was born into the House of Tudor and become King of England in 1509 at the age of 17. Henry is one of the most famous of the English monarchs, and he was also a real asshole, who got obesely fat and hideous as he got older. The Tudors is the dramatized account of his life, loves, and reign. Henry is perhaps best known for his six wives, two of whom had their heads chopped off.

Season Two saw Henry destroying the Catholic Church in England, having lots of sex with Anne Boleyn, played scrumptuously by Natalie Dormer, and finally, tiring of Anne Boleyn and having her beheaded.

It was with great anticipation that the Scholars awaited the start of Season Three. Unfortunately, three or four episodes in, we all think the series has gone to shite. What’s most annoying is the introduction of new characters, most notably Sir Francis Bryan, a eye patch wearing dufus who reminds us of the cat in Shrek. The character, played annoyingly by Allan Van Sprang, is completely out of place, as are several of the female characters. The series is starting to look like Melrose place meets Medieval Town.

Not that we are overly bothered by it, but we are inclined to think that most of the female leads in the series are too hot, and too skanky to be realistic. In an era when syphlilis and other sexually transmitted diseases were widespread, and there was virtually no birth control, it seems highly unlikely that upper class maidens would be banging casual acquaintances behind curtains in a ballroom, mere steps away from their husband, who is likely wearing a sword.

It also seems as though the production budget has been slashed drastically. For example, Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, is shown suppressing the revolt in the north with about 20 men, and executing hundreds of people. In reality, at the end of Pilgrimage of Grace, which saw thousands of northerners rebel against the destruction of the monasteries and churches in the north of England in 1536, only 270 of the leaders were executed.

It seems like historical accuracy is being replaced with Desperate Housewives style drama, intrigue, and bad writing. We couldn’t even bear to watch this week’s episode, in which Henry, distraught over the death of his one true love, Jane Seymore, waxes philosophical with an imaginary, overacting old guy.

So, if you want to save the series, get rid of the guy with the eye patch, show us way more nudity and people being burned alive, and try to bring back a modicum of historical accuracy.

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Father Dooley's temporary church

Religious Differences

Sister Alma Rose is not a Roman Catholic, but she is telling Father Dooley and me that she used to want to be a nun “in the worst way.” (Ha ha.)

“Oh?” Father Dooley says interestedly, raising one eyebrow, which, I don’t know HOW he does that, but of course I don’t know how to whistle, either, though I can do cartwheels one-handed. “What changed your mind?”

I have made Father Dooley promise to always keep me informed of his whereabouts, if one of us moves out of Hilltop, so that when the Pope allows priests to get married I can jet to his city on the next plane. Father Dooley's, not the Pope's

“The wardrobe,” Sister Alma Rose says, “because, really, can y’all picture what I’d look like in one of them outfits? A giant beetle, is what I’d look like.”

Father Dooley laughs and says that many nuns just wear regular street clothes these days, and Sister Alma Rose says that would take all the fun out of it. Like, why be a doctor if you’re not going to wear a white lab coat and a stethoscope?

Father Dooley is spending a lot of time sitting on Sister Alma Rose’s porch this fall because his church, Saints Peter and Paul, had a bad fire and no one can go into the building.

They are having church, or, whaddayacallit, Mass, and, I guess, Confession and Catechism and the Inquisition and the other stuff that Catholics do, in an empty warehouse that used to be Hilltop Elementary School when Mama and Daddy were kids.

But Father Dooley’s paper files and computer and desk, et cetera, all got burnt to a Frito, and he has this lackey priest-in-waiting who is taking care of that little administrative problem while he, Father Dooley, sits on Sister Alma Rose’s porch and drinks Mr. Truman LaFollette’s indescribable lemonade.

The Catechism Lesson, by Jules-Alexis Muenier 1890

But Father Dooley is not slacking off, oh, no, he is here on church business, because we are talking about Catholic things, two in particular: (1) the execution of heretics by means of setting fire to them, and (2) the Divine Office (Liturgy of the Hours), which, unlike Father Dooley’s office, is extant.

Transubstantiation is NOT “a way for commuters to get to work”

Lady Jane Grey (above, looking a bit peaked) and Queen Mary each believed that the other's soul was damned. And they MEANT it! The Reformers had piled up a lot of grievances over the centuries during which the Roman Catholic Church had amassed power, money, and land. It was the rule rather than the exception for popes and cardinals to have mistresses, if not secret wives and children. Priests lined their pockets with "indulgences" — money from their Flocks for the wiping away of sins.

Father Dooley and I have been debating the following question:

Why did Lady Jane Grey have to die?

And the short answer, we agree, is that Lady Jane, a Protestant, made quite a point of NOT believing in transubstantiation and a few other points of Roman Catholic doctrine at a time when a VERY Catholic queen, Mary I, was on the throne in England. (That’s “Mary the First,” not “Mary Eye.”)

Transubstantiation is the alleged changing of the bread and wine served at holy communion into the actual body and blood of Christ.

NOW: It’s not like Catholics believe that the bread turns into, like, skin and fingers and toes and the wine gets all thick and red and has little platelets swimming around in it. Father Dooley says that the substance of the “host” and the wine changes but not their their appearance or texture.

I, personally, do not care, and neither does Sister Alma Rose, who dislikes discussing doctrinal issues.

She says that we all believe in the same God, who created the universe as an expression of divine love, and that God knows and cares about us each individually, and that God makes his love known to us through grace… and if we can agree on that, why aren’t we having a big ecumenical party and celebrating instead of arguing about minor details?

A medieval Mass being celebrated by a bishop

Father Dooley says several things in response, which I will summarize:

1. Everybody DOESN’T agree with that, what Sister Alma Rose says, and in fact some of it could be considered “doctrine.” (Sister Alma Rose snorts.)
2. Our actions have consequences: Like, if you stick your hand in a pot of boiling water, your hand will burn.
3. We are all screwing up (Father Dooley’s words) all the time, acting in unloving ways. Love is a miracle, a gift of grace, and cannot be deserved. If we always got what we deserved, we would be crackers.
4. Jesus’ life and teachings, death, and resurrection are proof of a higher law, which is that God’s love is greater than the law of consequences; or, rather, that God, through Jesus, paid the piper so that we wouldn’t have to go around weighed down by guilt and anxiety. This only works if we admit we behaved badly (confession) and want very much not to keep behaving badly (repentance), and if we accept the sacrifice (communion) and are grateful for it. That is the freedom Jesus promised; that is the Good News.
5. We are likely to take communion more to heart — to be blown away by the liberating acceptance of God’s sacrifice for our sakes — if we believe that the bread is Jesus’ body and the wine is his blood, than if we are just eating stale bread crumbs and drinking grape juice.
6. This is not all just a matter of collecting chits for the Afterlife. Salvation is here and now, overcoming sickness and all manner of other here-and-now penalties for less-than-perfect behavior.

Well, I say to Father Dooley, this is all fine and good, but I still don’t think it’s worth having your head chopped off over. Transubstantiation is not even in the Bible, after all. Jesus said, at the Last Supper, “This is my body, broken for you,” but he was always speaking metaphorically, saying stuff like, “I am the vine and you are the branches,” et cetera.

The Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci 1498

The Nine Days’ Queen

King Edward VI of England, by William Scrots c. 1550

Lady Jane Grey was the Queen of England for nine days in 1553, after Edward VI and before Mary I, “Bloody Mary,” as she came to be called. (For more information, see “Historical Background,” below.)

Lady Jane did not want to be queen. She was only sixteen, and she was indeed a staunch Protestant, but a group of greedy grownups, including her own parents, made her marry this awful man, Lord Guilford Dudley, and then persuaded the ruling council to name her queen, and so queen she was, for nine days, until Mary Tudor swept down upon London with several thousand of the faithful, and, voila, Mary was queen and Jane was imprisoned in the Tower of London, convicted of high treason, and sentenced to death.

Mary and Jane were cousins, and Mary really did not want to execute Jane, knowing that Jane was made queen over her own objections. Mary told Jane she would let her off the hook if Jane would just convert to the True Faith, Roman Catholicism, and to tell you the truth, if I’d been Jane, I would have said, fine, okay, but I would have had my fingers crossed and then I would have gone back to my cozy life of studying Protestant doctrine and having my servants do my laundry and cook my meals. But Jane, a better woman than I, or a more stubborn one, refused.

A 15th-century representation of the Tower of London. Shown is the White Tower, begun by William the Conquerer in 1078. The White Tower still stands, but it is now part of a large complex of buildings that comprise "The Tower"

Jane was mostly concerned with doctrinal issues. She could not accept the Roman Catholic belief in transubstantiation — plus, she had an illegal English translation of the Bible, and she was studying Greek and Hebrew so that she could read the original biblical texts rather than translations. The Catholic Church didn’t want lay persons reading the Bible at all, because if they read it than they would begin to interpret it.

Verdict: A sad waste of a young life

My debate with Father Dooley is no debate at all, as it turns out, because we pretty much agree about Lady Jane.

“Two things,” says Father Dooley, holding up two fingers so I won’t forget that he has two points to make.

“First, it’s hard for our modern ecumenical way of thinking to understand how radical it was to depart in any way from Catholic doctrine. For centuries, the Catholic church had been the ONLY Christian church, and it was not used to being disagreed with. In fact, when Henry VIII broke with the church, the Pope excommunicated him, and all of England with him. Heaven, according to the church, was not available to those who had been excommunicated.

Death by burning

“Second, even in the context of her time, and I believe she was beheaded in the 1550s, Lady Jane could have saved herself in good conscience. As brilliant a scholar as she was, she was also very young and very new to the heady freedom of Protestant thinking. Even her Protestant teachers warned her that she was excessively dogmatic. It’s very sad, really, especially since Elizabeth would be queen within a few years, and the policy of her reign was one of tolerance.”

Mary Tudor — Queen Mary I, or “Bloody Mary,” as she has become known — was merciful to her cousin Jane in having her beheaded. Before the end of Mary’s reign, almost three hundred “heretics” would be burned on street corners, in full view of the populace.

Eternal damnation

Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer and founder of Christian Science

Mary seems to have sincerely believed that her reign of terror was saving souls from eternal damnation — not the souls of those being burned, it was too late for them — but the souls of those who looked on, who heard the screams and smelled the charred flesh.

Sister Alma Rose has no patience with preachers of hellfire and damnation. She believes that we grow spiritually over a succession of earthly incarnations. Thus she does not believe that ANY souls are consigned eternally to hell. She likes to quote Mary Baker Eddy on the subject:

Does Divine Love commit a fraud on humanity by making man inclined to sin, and then punishing him for it? …In common justice, we must admit that God will not punish man for doing what he created man capable of doing, and knew from the outset that man would do. God is “of purer eyes than to behold evil.”  —Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 356:25 ff.

To be continued… Praying the Hours (the Divine Office)

The Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves, c. 1440

Historical Background — The Man Who Would Be Pope

Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII of England, was beheaded May 19, 1536, at the Tower of London

I have been reading a lot of historical fiction about England (c. 1150 – 1600) lately, and I’ve read, like, five books in a row about Anne Boleyn—

• The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory
• The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn, by Alison Weir
• The Concubine: A Novel, by Norah Lofts
• The Lady in the Tower: The Wives of Henry VIII, by Jean Plaidy
• A Lady Raised High: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (Tudor Women Series), by Laurien Gardner

—because it’s so much fun to find out which authors think that

• (a) Anne Boleyn was a world-class B-word (Daddy won’t let me say or spell the B-word that rhymes with witch, but then he also didn’t think that I should be reading about Anne Boleyn because if he had his way I’d still be reading Thomas the Tank Engine and playing with Barbies, which, excuse me, are way more obscene than Anne Boleyn), and (b) Henry VIII the longsuffering husband, as opposed to those authors who think that
• (a) Anne Boleyn was June Cleaver in tights — no, wait, it was Henry who wore tights — and (b) Henry was a cruel tyrant.

Henry VIII, King of England, born 1491, reigned 1509-1547

The truth is that Henry was a spoiled baby, and spoiled babies are often tyrants. But because he was the King of England and not an ACTUAL baby, his tyrannical acts had lasting and tragic consequences, inasmuch as there was no one with the authority to send him to bed without his supper.

Henry established the Church of England, as separate from the Roman Catholic Church, with himself as the Supreme Head.

He’d been waiting six years for the Pope to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn and make her queen and force her by intimidation and other methods that hardly ever work to have healthy baby boys.

Finally, tired of waiting for the Pope, he said, in effect, “I’ll just make up my OWN church and marry Anne and dissolve the wealthy monasteries and seize all their stuff.”

But he, Henry, did not mean for church doctrine or worship to change at all. He was not in sympathy with reformers such as Martin Luther. The English Reformation, however, got away from him. Once started, it couldn’t be stopped.

* * *

The Succession

Jane Seymour, Queen Consort of England 1536-1537

When Henry died, AT LONG LAST, his only legitimate son, Edward Tudor, became Edward VI, King of England.

Edward, whose mother was Jane Seymour (Henry’s third wife; she died a few weeks after giving birth), was only nine years old and he didn’t really run the country… a bunch of greedy grownups made all the political decisions.

But Edward was a committed Protestant and so while he was king the real Reformers in England were more active.

At age fifteen, after he had been king for only six years, Edward died of a lung disease (probably tuberculosis).

Then all hell broke loose.

Henry’s elder daughter Mary Tudor was next in line in the Succession (the list of who gets to be in charge of England when the current ruler dies; see diagram above), but everybody knew that she would restore Catholic rule and persecute Protestants, of whom there were growing numbers.

Mary Tudor, Queen of France, daughter of Henry VII of England, sister of Henry VIII, wife of Louis XII of France and then of Charles Brandon, 1st duke of Suffolk; Mary and Charles were the maternal grandparents of Lady Jane Grey

Lady Jane Grey was the granddaughter of Henry’s sister Mary, and she (Jane) had a legitimate claim to the throne if you took the position that Mary Tudor and Elizabeth, who was next on the list after Mary, were bastards (sorry, Daddy), which, technically, they were since Henry’s marriages to their mothers had been annulled.

As explained above, Lady Jane was basically manhandled to the throne by the evil John Dudley, First Duke of Northumberland, the father of Guilford Dudley, whom Jane was forced to marry. When the time of reckoning came, father and son were executed along with Lady Jane, though I doubt whether Queen Mary had many regrets about ridding the kingdom of those two.

Guilford’s brother Robert Dudley, First Earl of Leicester, was cut from different cloth. He was a man of intelligence and character (the rumors that he killed his first wife, Mary, have been judged by history to be false). He and Queen Elizabeth had been childhood friends, and it is generally believed that they had a lifelong love affair that was never consummated.

Eventually he married Lettice Knollys, a granddaughter of Lady Mary Boleyn, Anne’s sister.

I, Fanny

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Las siguientes imágenes corresponden al episodio 2×09 de la serie “The Tudors” (“Los Tudor”), que ficciona algunos de los acontecimientos de los que se habla en este blog. Podéis ampliar la información de este vídeo en los siguientes enlaces:

• Innocentia Veritas Viat Fides Circumdederunt me inimici mei
• Biografía de Thomas Wyatt (I)
• Biografía de Thomas Wyatt (II)

Antecedentes: La reina ha caído en desgracia; acusada de traición, ha sido condenada a muerte. Desde su celda en la Torre de Londres, observa cómo ejecutan a sus cinco “cómplices”; entre ellos, su propio hermano. Otro prisionero de la Torre, el poeta Thomas Wyatt, reflexiona sobre “los días sangrientos” que están viviendo.

Acum citeva zile am vazut un film cu Natalie Portman, in rolul lui Anne Boleyn, ca sotie a regelui Henry al optalea. Filmul trebuie sa fi aparut deja de ceva timp dar cumva a iesit sa il vad tocmai acum. Aceasta bucata de istorie si episoade din viata regelui si a uneia din sotiile lui(caci a avut 6 in total, si chiar faimos pentru acest stil de viata de a se insura si reinsura..)Anne.

Filmul mi-a aparut interesant si intens. Dar mai presus de aspectul artistic m-a interesat sa compar si sa fiu surprinsa de cit de mult lucrurile s-au schimbat in ultimele 500 de ani si totusi cit de putin. Okay, nu ne mai trebuie postalionul care sa ia citeva saptamini ca sa duca un mesaj dintr-un loc in altul ci instant o secunda pentru un mesaj, nu avem nevoie de cai ci , ne urcam in masina, tren, avion.

Si multe beneficii de pe urma tehnologiei, tel mobil si cite si mai cite. Si totusi, ciudat este ca femeia si acum 500 de ani si astazi fara nici o diferenta nu face decit eforturi sa placa barbatului si sa fie atragatoare si interesanta daca e posibil. Si e posibil! Atita vreme cit industria cosmeticelor este dezvoltata, chirurgia estetica posibila, cariera care sa aduca venit, de ce nu ar fi posibil ca femeia sa fie atragatoare caci asta urmareste , nu? Sa fie atragatoare !! Ciudat este ca accentul nu se pune pe inteligenta, pe farmec personal, personalitate. Ci aspect exterior, este ori nu este?

 Pentru ca femeia ca o maimutica a trebuit sa faca pe plac barbatului acum 500de ani , si pentru ca isi respecta regnul trebuie sa continue sa faca pe plac barbatului, societatii de consum, care ceea ce vede, consuma! Fie ca poate cumpara , in ceea ce priveste obiecte, fie ca o sa cintareasca cu privirea, sa o evalueze ca pe UN PRODUS si nu om!

Iar femeia,  in functie de cum o sa apara dupa ce e cintarita cu privirea capata o apreciere sau e clasata ca nesemnificativa. Oare lucrurile trebuie sa fie asa?  Esential  aspectul exterior in locul caracterului omului??

Buna intrebare, dar care este raspunsul corespunzator timpurilor actuale si lumii in care traim?

On an early autumn day in September Mellors and I joined his family at Hever Castle for a huge family picnic, to celebrate two engagements. There were 18 of us including two grandparents and Gemma the dog. We picnicked in the beautiful grounds and walked through the Italian gardens – three generations of gardeners together!

This rose is a favourite of Mellors’ grandmother.

The Man Booker 2009 shortlist was announced on 8th September, so this post is a little outdated. But for those who haven’t been following it, here is the list of nominated books:

• The Children’s Book – AS Byatt
• Summertime – JM Coetzee
• The Quickening Maze – Adam Foulds
• Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
• The Glass Room – Simon Mawel
• The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters

I read the synopsis for these books at the Man Booker site, and am really looking forward to sinking my teeth into Wolf Hall and The Little Stranger.

Wolf Hall is set in England in the 1520s during the time of Henry VIII and tells the story of Cromwell who was one of the king’s advisors. He has always been portrayed as a manipulative and cunning person who trusted and was trusted by nobody. However, in most of the books I have read dealing with this time period, he has very rarely been the central character (those were mostly books on Anne Boleyn); Wolf Hall is probably the first book that is devoted entirely to him. So, as a former history student, I would love to read a book about the events of that time through his eyes.

The Little Stranger is set in the 1940s and seems to be the story of a grand old house and its inhabitants traumatized by some shocking event in the past. Not too much information is provided in the synopsis, but it was just enough to catch my attention and make me want to read the book.

I should ideally also plan to read AS Byatt and JM Coetzee – two rather shocking gaps in my reading. I have never read any book by these authors, and I do think The Children’s Book and Summertime might be a good place to start.

So, which of the Man Booker 2009 nominees are you planning to read? and why?

Ophelia

My name is Jane Sidney, My brother is Henry Sidney. He married Mary Dudley, the elder sister of John Dudley, King Edward I’s Lord Protector. I was raised close with the Dudleys, especially Guilford and I lived with Princess Elizabeth, King Edward’s elder sister. Me and Princess Elizabeth is close, so close, often the four of us ( me, Princess Elizabeth, Guilford and Robert ) wander around a small pond near our house, It was the most favorite place in the whole world. Me and her Majesty usually dance while Guilford read Thomas Wyatt’s poetry book and Robert, ah Robert just stands there near the pond, I never knew what he was looking at. Everything was perfect for me and Guilford, but we both know that both Elizabeth and Robert was meant to be something bigger, and meant to be with each other  of course. Guillford was my best friend, he was like a brother to me and I was just a little girl who just want to dance.

The day was summer, that unforgettable day. It was the day Princess Elizabeth had been looking forward all month. Her Majesty’s dear brother THE KING will visit in the late afternoon and He will be staying at her house for the night in occasion of May day tomorrow, which was what her majesty had been preparing all day and night. Her majesty said that me and Guilford shouldn’t go to the pond at the afternoon because maybe the king will come early but we still did it anyway. “Ah, Mark.. what moan.. should I for.. thee make more”  Guilford said while he read his small book containing of Thomas Wyatt’s poetry. I was laying at the pond like Ophelia, as I stare at the skies, I wonder who my mother was, I never knew her, Henry had told me much about her but I hadn’t saw him in a long time. “Since.. that thy.. death thou hast.. deserved best” Guilford continued. I pull my head up and I took a look at him, “I think it should be ‘Since that thy death.. thou hast deserved best’, isn’t it ?” then he said, “uh, it is ? hmm” and he continued “Save.. only that mine.. eye is.. forced sore” then I heard voices of horses and people talking near the street “Why should I do it ?”, someone said. Then I stands up slowly and I walked to the side of a tree near the small street. As I looked up, I saw THE KING OF ENGLAND, King Edward VI. I was stunned and  I just stare at him like he stare at me, I keep staring at him as he went to her majesty’s house. I looked at Guilford, and he looked at me ” The King is coming, isn’t he ?” then I just smile. I ran to Her Majesty’s house trough the bushes with Guilford, then when we arrived I hurried to my room and I got ready. Before I knew it, Guilford knock on my door, “Jane, Hurry up !! His Majesty have arrived !!!” , “Just a minute”, then I open the door, “I need to brush my hair, wait a minute” then he stands by my bedroom door as I brush my hair all to one side then I went to Guilford, “does this look good ?” , He looked stunned and said, “Are you insane ? The King of England is on he’s way here, Hurry up” then I went back to the front of the mirror, Guilford suddenly said ” Why don’t you just do it like you usually do ?” then I just brush it normally then I went to Guilford, “If he laughed at my hair, it’s all your fault” , ” No, It’s not” then He walked to the main room as I follow.

As I arrived, Princess Elizabeth said ” Ah, Jane. here you are.” , ” I’m truly sorry I was late”, then she said the most wonderful words I loved ”  You have to stand here, next to me, as you are and will be my loyal lady-in-waiting ” then I just stand next to her as  Robert and Guilford also stand next to her, only a step behind. Then I saw him, THE KING OF ENGLAND. We all curtsies to him and He said, ” Thank you, my beloved sister for your invitation” then he looked at me, as I was scared to death i looked down. He came forward me ” And who is this ?” I curtsies and I answered, ” Jane Sidney, Your Majesty”, ” Nice to meet you, Ms Sidney” he smiled. “hmmpp..” giggled Guilford then quickly Robert slapped him in his leg then Guilford stopped. The king walked forward Robert and Guilford, they curtsies and Robert said, ” Your Majesty, I haven’t saw you in a long time” “Ah, Yes Robert, it’s been a long time.” , then they and Princess Elizabeth  walked together to other rooms. As they gone, I turn to Guilford, ” You…” , ” ha ha ha ha”.

It’s almost midnight and I can’t seems to sleep. Usually if I can’t sleep, I went to the garden near my bedroom which can be seen from Guildford’s bedroom window, and we look at the star until dawn. But this time, I am alone at the garden. I just stand at the front of the castle, looking up to the skies, then all of the sudden, ” Ms. Jane ? ” I turn to my left and ” Oh GOD, It’s KING Edward” that’s what I tought, Thank God I didn’t say it. I was shocked, so I just curtsies in front of him, ” Pardon me, Your Majesty. I didn’t see you ” I said,  ”What is a young woman like you doing out here in this time of night”, because I’m too scared to look at him I keep looking down, ” I can’t seems to sleep, Your Majesty. If you are not pleased, I shall go inside” , ” Yes indeed, I’m not pleased that a young woman outside all alone, you should go inside.” I curtsies and I went to the door, in the way ” If you let me, Lady. I shall accompany you” , as I turn around, that was the second time I saw his face even tough I should have see him all the time. ” I’d be pleased, My Lord ” I smiled.

As I went inside the castle, I stand up tall in the front of the door to wait for King Edward. As he come ” Why don’t you sit there.” he pointed at a chair next to the fireplace, and as I walk just a step, he touch my upper arm to stop me ” And please do not be scared, right now I am anything but the King of England” and I look at him and smile as he smile to me. When I sit, he also sat next to me and he took a book, and as I saw the book, I remembered ” That’s Guilford’s” I said in my head. “If.. waker care.. if sudden pale.. color ” he read, then he turned to me and laughed, “Oh, god. Did I even read it right ?” Ha ha ha”then he stopped and ” Do you know how to read poems, Ms Jane ?” he asked me and ” I’m not very good, sire” then he give me the book. I took it and I read , ” If waker care, if sudden pale color. If many sighs, with little speech to plain. Now Joy, now woe, if they my cheer disdain..” then He stopped me, ” Now, Lady. You told me you wasn’t very good, but you are ” , ” I read this, almost everyday, sire so of course I can ” I smiled, ” Oh, so this is yours ? ” , ” No, it’s Guilford’s ” , then his smile faded for a while, ” Guilford is your lover ? ” he asked and “hmmpp..” I giggled, “pardon me, your majesty” then he smiled again ” do you think it’s funny, Lady Jane ? ” , ” well, yes your majesty. I always think of Guilford as my brother, not my lover ” and he laughed ” ah ha ha, pardon me then Jane.” then his smile faded again, ” You should really sleep now, it’s already past 1 ” I stand and curtsied then I went to the stairway then ” If you still can’t sleep, come here. I’ll wait until it’s 2 ” , ” You should also sleep, sire. or you’ll get tired for tomorrow” I said then he smiled , ” Ah, Yes. May day, Umm, Jane can you tell Guilford that I borrow this book ? ” , then I smiled ” Of Course, good night your majesty ” then he smiled, ” Good Night “

Even tough I slept at 1 am in the morning, I still manage to wake up at 6 am. I went to Princess Elizabeth’s bed chamber to wake her up, as I opened the door I saw her at the bed holding her leg and she looked at me with tears on her eyes, ” I can’t dance ” then I hurried next to her , ” Is your leg hurt ? ” then I get rid of the blanket which covered her legs and i said, ” I think you’ve got a cramp, Princess. Please wait here, I’ll get Robert ” then I ran to The Dudleys’ house and I knock on the door, thank god, Robert who opened it ” Robert, Princess’ leg is hurt, she’s crying in her bed chamber. I’m afraid she can’t dance for today’s festivities”. After Robert tell Princess Elizabeth to rest, she told me , ” Jane, you should replace me at the dance ” I stunned , ” My apologies, Princess but I’m afraid I can’t do it as well as you did” , ” Didn’t you always told me that all you want to do was to dance ? Please, Jane… ” then I smiled to her, ” Of course I will, your highness “.

It was 15 minutes before the dance number began. I was at my bed chamber with Guilford, I was sitting at a chair and he was also sitting in a chair right in front of me. ” Don’t be nervous, you dance with Her Majesty many times ” Guilford said, ” Yes, but this time I am dancing in front of The King of England ” then I remembered last night , ” Ah, and Guilford. THE KING OF ENGLAND also borrow your poetry book ” He looked stunned, ” WHAT !? ” , ” Don’t worry he will return it “, ” Ah, then what am I should do at the may day ?” I rolled my eyes, ” Talk to people, there will be Lady Jane Grey, your ‘future wive’” I laughed, “Oh, stop it !!”. Then come Robert, “Jane, are you ready ?” then I stand up straight and come to Robert, “This can be ‘the act of suicide’ like Anne Boleyn” I said to Robert, ” No, It’s not, you’ll do great.” then I walked pass him, then He yelled at me, “And Anne Boleyn didn’t suicide !!”. So here I was, the moment which change all my life, in the center of the garden, with all eyes looking at me. I was wearing a red mask with a beautiful short dress with a white leggings. “She isn’t Princess Elizabeth, She’s Brunet” some people said, “who is she, she looks like Anne Boleyn” some people said. But I saw Princess Elizabeth in front of me, with her brother, THE KING “I shouldn’t disappoint her” I think to my self. So I lift up my hand, and the music started, I closed my eyes for a second then I began dancing like how Her Highness used to tought me, after it all I stand up straight, lift my right hand up, and my other hand straight aside and both of my legs in a centre then I open my arms to the front and bowed like Sir Thomas Wyatt. The King stands and everybody silence, I stare at him scared, then He began to clap  and I smiled as everyone clapped then I remove my mask and I curtsies to His Majesty as he was looking at me.

After the dance, I went back to my bed chamber to change my outfit, but before I went back to the party, I put my red mask in the wooden box under my bed, it was my mothers and now it’s mine,  in it, there were my journal, a locket of my mother, Princess Elizabeth’s first give to me : a lovely embroidered little bible of the new testament. After I put it there, I closed it and put it back under the bed, then hurried back to the party, there were The King dancing with his cousin Lady Jane Grey and I saw Guilford watching it in the corner and I come to him. ” Do you want to dance, I can dance with you.” I whispered to him, “no, that’s all right. I don’t want to” , ” she is lovely isn’t she ?” I said to him, “well, they say she is the accessor to the throne” then I looked at him stunned, ” what !? I thought It was going to be Princess Mary.”, Guilford looked at me, “after what happened at last christmas, that will not going to happened”, ” is he going to marry her ?” I ask to Guilford, ” I guess, He’s the king Of England, He can do whatever he wants” we looked at Lady Jane Grey and King Edward finish their dance and we all clapped. I was still stunned at the fact that he will marry Lady Jane, but “who am I to judge, I’m not even a Lady.” I thought. The festivities was fun, but more and more I began to not feeling well, so I went to the castle, when I just going to open the Castle door, ” Are you all right there, Jane ?” then I turn around, and It’s the King, ” No, I’m just… “, then he said, ” I was going to ask you to dance with me, but because now I know, you’re an amazing dancer, I could not bare the shame” he laughed, ” could you do the honor of dancing with me here, where people will not laugh at me ?” he asked then I was stunned, ” are your majesty sure ?” then he took his hand in front of me and he smiled to me, and I took his hand and we dance to the music so far away, I tried to not be as good as I always dance so that he can look good, as I am afraid to look him in the eyes, ” I think you are lovely, Jane.” he told me, and I start to look his eyes, it was hazel-brownish, I can’t help to smile at him, but then when I turn left there’s Princess Elizabeth looking at us stunned, then I quickly stop and curtsies to her. ” why are you dancing here ? ” she asked , Then Edward said, ” we were just practicing, my dear sister. Now, let’s we return to the festivity” , I was afraid Her Highness will hate me if I like his brother, so I say nothing to her, which is quite hard because since I was little, I’ve told liz everything.

I was 10 in the evening, I can’t seems to sleep again, so I went outside my chamber, and to the fireplace. I was wondering about King Edward, I can’t help to fall for him, He was charming and full of charisma, ” Of Course, he is the king” I thought, then as I turn around I saw Princess Elizabeth, ” Jane, you still can’t sleep ? ” , ” Ah, Yes. I don’t seems to know why.” I smiled, then she sit next to me, ” I’m very mad at you, Jane ” she said and I was scared so I just looked down, ” you used to tell me everything, now even my brother liking you, you don’t even tell me” she continued, I looked at her and smile, ” I thought you were going to yell at me” I said, ” I would never, I’m so happy for you, the future Queen”, ” I love you, liz ” I said, ” I love you too, my dear ’sister’. Now, go to sleep, or you’ll get sick” she said, then I stand up, curtsied and went o my chamber to sleep.

At the morrow, The King left to Westminster, ” I am looking forward of seeing you at the court, Jane ” he said before he went back. His Majesty has invited us, to Court this weekend, it’s a pity to left such a wonderful place like this but “It’s also a great opportunity for Guilford, Robert and me”, Liz said. So because this can be the last day here, I went to the pond alone. I stands at the rock in the pond, then suddenly  I see King Edward at the corner looking at me, ” Ah, Your Majesty..” I said then I fallen to the pond, He get into the pond also and as I get my head out of the water he is in front of me, then I laughed because I was nervous. He touch my cheek and to my lips, and then we kissed at the center of the pond while we were swimming. when we are out of the water, we were all wet, ” Do you mind of accompany me here, until our clothes dry” he asked, ” Of course, your majesty I will.” so I sit at the corner next to him and we talk until it’s almost dark. ” Oh, It’s already late. you should go back to your house” he said, Then I stand up as he was also then he went to his horse and he turned to me, ” Can I have the honor of bringing you home, My Lady ?”, ” I’d be pleased, Your Majesty” as we arrived at the castle, he kissed my hand as a goodbye. As I went inside, I saw Liz, ” Oh, God. Jane, where have you been ? You almost miss dinner, thank god, Kat didn’t know you were missing”

The next morning, the fifth of us ( me, Liz, Robert, Guilford and Kat ) leave to the westminster palace with a carriage, inside of it there was me, Liz, Kat and Guilford while Robert rode the horses with the coach. I was looking at the window the whole time, while Guilford slept and Liz read her book. I can’t hardly wait to come to court, and see the King, but I also feel nervous, as maybe what he will do, “will he change his mind, or will he hate me” I thought.

> Guilford Dudley <

I saw her looking at the window the whole time we were in the carriage, I didn’t know what she was thinking. “are you still worry about the hand glof ?” I asked her, then she looked at me and she smiled, “no, well yes but I wasn’t wondering about that”. “The King will be happy to accept your glof, Jane” Elizabeth said, “well yes, but if you nit it the right way” Kat said. Then Elizabeth looked at outside the window beside Jane, “that horse out there, if you want to use it, you can, Jane” she said, “I know how you love to go to the pond, you still can”, then Jane smiled at her and I came back to sleep.

>Jane<

Then we arrived at the court, I was so nervous, I remembered what I did the past night, I was practicing how to walk as a lady, how to curtsies well, and all. Then I walked just behind Elizabeth and Kat, I stand tall and I pushed my stomach back, so that I can look taller. just outside the Palace, The King was standing with John Dudley. “I welcome you, my dear sister here at court. I hope you enjoy your days here, and I hope you stay for a long time” he said, while he welcomed us, I can’t help to stare at John Dudley, I seems to have the feeling of violence when I saw him, then I remembered, what Robert had said to me “My father is a dangerous man, everyone knows that but I still don’t know why the King still trust him” then he looked at me, so I quickly looked at the King.

(( i’ll continue it later ))

this is FICTIONAL

One of the more interesting stories I have found during my research of our family history is that my generations 15th Great Grandmother was Margaret Wyatt. While she may be little more than a footnote in the history of the world, she was a Lady in Waiting to King Henry VIII’s wife Anne Boleyn, her nephew had quite a bit of impact on the history of England. With some help from Wikipedia, I shall tell you the story.

He was Thomas Wyatt, a rebel leader during the reign of Queen Mary I of England; his rising is traditionally called Wyatt’s rebellion. He is also known as Wyatt the Younger.

He was born at Allington Castle, the only son of Sir Thomas Wyatt, the famous poet, by Elizabeth Brooke, daughter of Thomas Brooke, 3rd Lord Cobham. The Duke of Norfolk was his godfather. At the age of fifteen he became a squire at the court of King Henry VIII, and Joint Constable of Conisborough Castle. In the same year, his father was imprisoned after a feud with the king’s brother-in-law, Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk and on the false charge of being Anne Boleyn’s lover.

Anne Boleyn was beheaded on May 19, 1536. Thomas’s father was later released, but re-imprisoned in 1541 and only released after the intervention of Queen Catherine Howard. Thomas himself married Jane Hawte, daughter and co-heiress of Sir William Hawte of Bishopsbourne, by whom he had several children. He is also known to have had an illegitimate son, whose mother Elizabeth was a daughter of Sir Edward Darrell of Littlecote.

He was brought up a Roman Catholic. However, he is said to have been turned into an enemy of the Spaniards by witnessing the activities of the Spanish Inquisition while accompanying his father on a mission to Spain. On his father’s death in 1542, he inherited Allington Castle and Boxley Abbey. He served in the war against France, and was knighted in 1547. During the reign of King Edward VI, he was arrested for breaking windows while drunk. He was tried before the Privy Council and imprisoned in the Tower of London.

On his release, Wyatt went to fight for the Habsburg emperor (who was also king of Spain), Charles V in Flanders, obtaining further valuable military experience. In 1543 he took part in the siege of Landrecies, and in the following year was at the siege of Boulogne.

Returning to Allington, he lived quietly until the uprising by the Duke of Northumberland, to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne. Escaping punishment by Queen Mary, he took no further part in politics until Mary’s plans to marry Philip the prince of Spain, later Philip II of Spain, became known. In 1554 he joined with the conspirators who combined to prevent the marriage. A general movement was planned; but his fellow-conspirators were timid and inept, the rising was serious only in Kent, and Wyatt became a formidable rebel mostly by accident. On January 22, 1554 he summoned a meeting of his friends at his castle of Allington, and January 25 was fixed for the rising.

On January 26 Wyatt occupied Rochester, and issued a proclamation to the county. The country people and local gentry collected, but at first the queen’s supporters, led by Lord Abergavenny and Sir Robert Southwell, the sheriff, appeared to be able to suppress the rising with ease. But the Spanish marriage was unpopular, and Kent was more affected by the preaching of the reformers than most of the country districts of England. Abergavenny and Southwell were deserted by their men, who either disbanded or went over to Wyatt, who now had 3,000 men at his command. A detachment of the London trainbands sent against him under the command of the Duke of Norfolk also joined the rebels, raising their numbers to 4,000, and the Duke was forced to return to London.

The rising now seemed so formidable that a deputation was sent to Wyatt by the queen and council to ask for his terms. He insisted that the Tower should be surrendered to him, and the queen put under his charge. The insolence of these demands caused a reaction in London, where the reformers were strong and were at first in sympathy with him. When he reached Southwark on February 3 he found London Bridge occupied in force, and was unable to penetrate into the city. He was driven from Southwark by the threats of Sir John Brydges (or Bruges), afterwards Lord Chandos, who was prepared to fire on the suburb with the guns of the Tower.

He could not find boats for crossing into Middlesex or Essex, so he marched his force up the river to Kingston, where he found the bridge destroyed. They repaired it and crossed the Thames, and made his way to Ludgate with a part of his following. Some of his men were cut off, others lost heart and deserted. His only hope was that a rising would take place, but the loyal forces kept order, and after a futile attempt to force the gate Wyatt surrendered.

He was brought to trial on March 15, and could make no defence. Execution was for a time delayed, no doubt in the hope that in order to save his life he would say enough to compromise the queen’s sister Elizabeth, afterwards Queen Elizabeth, in whose interests the rising was supposed to have been made. But he would not confess enough to render her liable to a trial for treason. It was only through Elizabeth’s dignity and composure that she managed to escape from the scandal unharmed, although she was spied upon and placed under house arrest for the rest of her sister’s reign.

He was executed on April 11, and on the scaffold expressly cleared the princess of all complicity in the rising. After he was beheaded, his body was quartered.

His estates were afterwards partly restored to his son, George, the father of the Sir Francis Wyatt (d. 1644) who was governor of Virginia in 1621–26 and 1639–42. A fragment of the castle of Allington is still inhabited as a farm-house, near Maidstone, on the bank of the Medway.